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My Life for
Alexa
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Making Connections for Better Emotional and Physical Health
What is My Life?
My Life is a “skill” that runs on Amazon's cloud-based voice platform. It was created to reduce social isolation in seniors living alone and to reduce the stress families and caregivers experience in taking care of them. Millions of older adults live in an assisted living facility or are at home using a home healthcare service. While they might appreciate what a smartphone and email could do to help them stay in touch with people, many are just not as comfortable with these devices. Alexa devices that use voice are much easier and convenient for older people to use.
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My Life increases the user's ability to communicate with people that matter and to have their daily life-status observed (both for mental and physical health reasons). With My Life, it is extremely simple to listen to messages from family or care providers as well as respond to those messages with voice. (Family and care-circle members can simple SMS/text a message to be delivered by voice in My Life). Most importantly, daily or occasional short-surveys can be created and administered helping keep track of conditions, emotions, and hopes, building up a record of progress and areas that need encouragement.
My Life - Use Scenarios
In today's world of smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers, there are still barriers to easy and frequent communication. If a family, friends or caregivers want to communicate with an older person living alone, often that means making a phone call and leaving a message. Then it means waiting for a return call. Or wondering if they even got the message. Sometimes you want to have a short conversation just to "check in" during a busy workday, but you know that could mean taking up a lot of time you don't have. So you don't call as often as you might like. Feeling guilty yet?
​With My Life, you can send a text message or email to your loved one and My Life will read the message aloud. It also takes a voice reply and converts it back to text. Easy to send a message, easy for hearing the message and replying by voice.
Remembering doctor appointments, family events, medications, etc. can be a challenge for many seniors and is no doubt a cause for family and caregivers to worry. With a simple text message a care circle member can add an event to the user’s calendar or a reminder. My Life then reminds the senior when they start up My Life.
Everyone knows that the use of prescription medicine has grown by leaps and bounds. It is not uncommon for an adult of 55 or over to be taking 5 or more medications. My Life can make reminders more friendly by interjecting them occasionally and sporadically. It can also check to see if someone is experiencing adverse side effects from the medications they are taking.
My Life has the ability to ask questions with defined answers (like Activities of Daily Living) This can be extremely useful for his loved ones and caregivers to understand the state of health. Let's say he has had a hip replacement and is in recovery. My Life can ask, "How uncomfortable is it for you to walk today? Answer with a number from 1 to 10 with 1 being very comfortable and with 10 very uncomfortable?" My Life can spot a trend and send alerts to loved ones or caregivers. Alerts can be designated with several levels of urgency
What does it do for you?
01
Stay
Connected
Research has shown that maintaining social connections can improve health. My Life extends Alexa capability to help users easily stay connected to loved ones, their circle of care and the outside world. My Life's ability to monitor user condition via survey can help caregivers and loved ones spot potential health problems early.
02
Eases Concern Over Safety, Quality of Care
For family members with an elder living alone, My Life gives assurance that their loved one is being taken care of. Survey questions and reminders help keep track of medication and side effects. Constant access to easy messaging promotes confidence in safety and well-being.
03
Enhances
Independent Living
Better connections to family, friends, and caregivers can improve the quality of life for elders living alone. Extending independence in living can ease the financial burden of healthcare costs in later years.
TED Talk: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness | Robert Waldinger
What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. As the director of 75-year-old study on adult development, Waldinger has unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. In this talk, he shares three important lessons learned from the study as well as some practical, old-as-the-hills wisdom on how to build a fulfilling, long life.
Whole Health Plus Technology
OUR STORY
Our founders, Chris Stakutis and Richard Smith are both veterans of the Information Technology industry with decades of experience. Chris, CTO, applied his software engineering expertise at Computer Associates, IBM, ERT and a number of startups. He has authored several books and owns a number of patents. Richard
in various sales and business development roles with Digital Equipment Corporation, CSC, Sprint and several technology startups.
The idea for My Life came about when Chris went through years of supporting elderly parents in assisted living facilities. When Chris was helping a startup implement a solution on the Alexa platform, he saw a way to use voice recognition to end the frustration of communicating with his caregivers and the facility owners.
OUR VISION
When an older parent or relative is living alone and needs care, it is a challenge for all concerned to keep them engaged in their healthcare and their well-being. Technology can bridge the gap, but it must be easy and convenient to use, otherwise busy people get distracted. Whole Health Plus Technology aims to build a platform that all concerned with caring for older citizens can use - family, friends, caregivers, facility owners and payers.
HOW TO RUN A MY LIFE DEMO NOW!
If you have an Alexa device, you can see a working example of My Life in action. Simply go to your Alexa app, search for the skill "My Life" and enable it. Once enabled say "Alexa, Tell My Life Demo". Remember to say Tell, not Start.
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Here's a video to help you get started with the demo.